The Inventor is aware that in industrial operations, and particularly mining operations, whether underground or surface mining, collisions involving vehicles, pedestrians and/or obstacles are a problem. These collisions can result in injury or death to the persons involved, damage to property (whether to vehicles or other structures), and at the very least, reduced productivity.
A foot cause of such collisions is poor visibility in mining environments. In underground mining, tunnels or working areas are enclosed by a floor and (usually) a low-hanging roof. There are also typically pillars or supports spaced throughout the working areas. Vehicles need to be relatively flat to fit in and manoeuvre within the working areas, and a vehicle operator typically has a viewpoint of 90° or less. These factors result in very poor visibility from the vehicle cabin.
In surface mining, the vehicles tend to be massive, in order to accommodate a larger payload, and therefore are quite cumbersome. Again, visibility, with respect to objects on the ground (e.g. pedestrians or obstacles) tends to be poor.
The Inventor is further aware that attempts have been made to address these drawbacks. Specifically, RFID (Radio. Frequency Identification) tags can be employed to provide an indication of proximity. However, these tags have a relatively low resolution and may be susceptible to interference. In fact, general prior art systems do not provide satisfactory results due to oversimplification of the detection techniques and/or human notification interfaces.
The Inventor therefore desires an apparatus, a system and a method for collision avoidance, each which is reliable, repeatable and convenient, thereby overcoming or at least alleviating the abovementioned drawbacks.